The Vow

by Denene Millner

  “You’re out? That’s all you have to say?” I ask as the situation spirals out of control. I can’t believe that I just poured my heart out to him and this is all he has to say. I have hit a wall with Keith Cooper. This selfish bastard will never change.

  “Hell yeah, I’m out. This shit is crazy. Enough with the mad pressure. You’re acting stupid, and I really don’t need this. I told you that those things take time and I’ll do it when the time is right. You act like a nigga don’t have kids and responsibilities. I can’t just drop everything because you think you need something. Grow up. I want a mature woman, not a spoiled child who’s throwing temper tantrums in the middle of the night!”

  “No, Keith, what you want is a fool! Someone willing to wait the rest of her life until the time is convenient for you just because you manage to squeeze out an ‘I love you’ every once in a while. Well, I’m not her!” I yell back.

  “Amaya, you’re bugging. Why don’t you go bother your little ball-bouncing boyfriend until you get it together,” he angrily replies.

  “Yeah, well, why don’t you go lay up with your dyke wife until you get it together,” I fire back.

  “What the hell did you just say to me?” Keith stops dead in his tracks.

  I grab the envelope with the photos of Trixie and her lover from off of my coffee table and throw it at the back of his head. “You heard me,” I respond as he turns around and picks them up off the floor. “This whole time you keep pushing me off because Trixie and the kids can’t handle you leaving… Well, take a good look, Keith. Um, it seems to me like Trixie can handle herself just fine!”

  I smirk with satisfaction as Keith opens the envelope. His jaw drops as he slowly examines each photo. That’s right, you punk, go on home to that, I think to myself.

  “Where did you get these?” he growls at me.

  “Does it even matter?” I ask.

  “I know you didn’t have my wife followed by some damn photographer,” he asks menacingly as he starts walking toward me.

  “Actually, I didn’t even need the pictures. I overheard her having phone sex in the Armani showroom during my fitting right before Awards Week. But I knew you’d never believe me if I just told you. So I decided to get proof,” I answer, standing my ground as he continues to advance toward me. “For the love of God, don’t ask me why. Guess I’m just the fool trying to do everything I can to make you love me back.”

  “Bitch, I cannot believe that you had my wife followed. Are you out of your mind?” he roars in my face.

  “Who are you calling a bitch?” I instinctively yell back.

  Just as I get the last word out of my mouth, Keith grabs me by the collar of my robe, lifts me slightly off the ground, and starts shaking me violently. “Are you fucking crazy? Who do you think you are?” he continues. As the satin starts to choke me, I swing my arms, trying to punch him in his face to make him release me. When he finally drops me to the ground, my robe is torn but I barely notice. I jump right up and start scratching his face and beating on his chest.

  “I hate you! I thought you loved me! Fuck you, Keith, fuck you!”

  “No, Amaya, fuck you,” he answers, shoving me to the ground with a hard push. “I should have left your crazy behind years ago.”

  This time the wind is completely knocked out of me. I lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, my body racked by sobs. Shortly after the door slams, I hear the sound of Keith’s car screeching away from the curb. I start screaming like a wounded animal.

  WHEN I AWAKE the next morning, the sun is shining brightly through my living room window. I’m still curled up in a ball on the floor. As I slowly pull myself off the ground, every bone in my body aches. I wince in pain with each breath. I hobble upstairs to the bathroom to get a full-length view of the previous night’s damage.

  The image in the mirror horrifies me. My face is puffy from crying and my hair is a matted mess. There’s bruising around my neck and along my left upper arm, where I landed when he shoved me. Three of my fingernails are torn. I look a wreck.

  I turn and head back into my bedroom. My chest tightens and the tears slowly start to fall. I can’t believe what happened last night. After all this time waiting and praying, how could he just walk out on me like that? Didn’t anything that we shared matter to him? I gave that bastard two years—how dare he choose Trixie over me. She obviously doesn’t give a fuck about him. I love him. But maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I need to not give a damn for Keith to feel me. Well, I’ve got something from him all right. Ain’t no man ever going to put his hands on me and get away with it. I’m going to show Keith what it feels like when I don’t give a damn about you. I grab my phone off the nightstand and dial number seven on my speed dial.

  “This is Vivian Evans,” she answers before the fourth ring.

  “Hey, girl,” I croak into the phone.

  “Amaya? Girl, why do you sound like that?” she asks.

  “Chile, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I respond, my throat burning from the effort of trying to speak. “But lemme ask you this question right quick. My girl has some dirt on a high-profile person that she wants to get out quickly but it can’t come back to her. Who should she call?”

  “Oh, a friend, huh? I know all your damn friends. What’s going on,” she demands.

  “Nothing, Viv, I promise. Trust me, I just can’t talk about it right now. Okay?”

  “Fine,” she sighs. “Your ‘friend’ should call Nikki Brown at Tattleteller magazine. Have her tell Nikki that I sent her. She’s practically the sole source for Industrywhispers.com. So this better be some shit that your ‘friend’ is taking to her.”

  “Oh, this is some shit, all right.”

  “Amaya, at least tell me if you’re okay or not.”

  “I’m going to be, girl. I may be heading out of town for a few days, but no worries, it’s all good. Let’s just say I need to get some beauty rest before I have to report to the set in Toronto. I’ll bring you up to speed when I return. Thanks for your help.”

  “All right, well, hit me as soon as you return,” Viv insists as we hang up.

  I immediately dial information and get the main number at Tattleteller magazine. Keith may have stormed out of here last night with the proofs and the negatives, but I’ve got a high-resolution pdf file on my hard drive with Nikki Brown’s name all over it.

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, we will now begin boarding Flight 883 direct to Catalina, Arizona. All first-class passengers please report to Gate 45,” announces the friendly voice over the intercom.

  It’s forty-eight hours later and my body still feels like crap from all the bruises, though my spirits are slowly recovering. A couple of weeks at the Mirival Spa and Resort is just what I need to get me back on track. I slowly stand and grab my carry-on. As I pass the trash can, I pause to take one last look at the cover of the special-edition Tattleteller that was released earlier this morning before casually dropping it in. There’s a split cover with a photo of Trixie and her blond lover alongside a photo of Trixie and Keith at the Corcoran Gallery. The bold yellow headline reads: TRIXIE COOPER TAKES A LOVER! KEITH NOT MAN ENOUGH?

  Checkmate, Negro!

  18

  VIVIAN

  Mommy? why you always mad at daddy?”

  That’s a question I was neither expecting nor prepared to answer. At least not in terms that a seven-year-old, with whom I’d just been discussing card tricks and which color shorts he liked most, would understand. We were in his room, packing his suitcase for his bimonthly weekend stay-over at his dad’s when Corey dropped the bomb. I was quiet, but I knew better than to leave him hanging; seven-year-olds, my son included, are notorious for holding on to a question until they get an answer. I decided quickly that my response should be slow and deliberate; I chose to deny, which isn’t exactly a lie. I’m not mad at Sean. I just choose not to have any words with him. It keeps things civil.

  “I’m not mad at your daddy,” I said, folding his swimming trunk
s into quarters and stuffing them into the bag.

  “If you’re not mad at Daddy, why ain’t you speaking to him when he comes over?”

  “It’s not ‘why ain’t you,’” I said, part stalling, part correcting his grammar—can’t have my child walking around speaking Ebonics, like his mama doesn’t have control over the King’s English. “It’s ‘why aren’t you.’”

  “Why aren’t you speaking to Daddy?” he said, quickly correcting himself.

  I took my time answering—pulled his underwear out of his dresser drawer and packed them neatly on top of his jeans and T-shirts. “Sometimes,” I spoke slowly, “grown-ups have differences of opinion, and rather than fight about it, they just go on about their business without really talking, so that they don’t get into arguments.”

  “Well, if you’re not mad at him, then why are you worried about getting into an argument with him?”

  “Sweetie, what’s happening between your dad and me isn’t really something you should be worrying yourself over,” I said, sitting on the bed and pulling him over to me. I hug him; he eagerly accepts my embrace.

  “I wish that you and Daddy and me could live together,” he said.

  “I wish you, Daddy, and I could live together,” I counter. “You don’t say ‘me’ in that sentence.”

  “You, Daddy, and I,” he says, exasperated.

  “Well, sweetie, take it from Mommy: You can’t always get what you want,” I said and leaned in to kiss his cheek. I got up off the bed and grabbed his knapsack out of the corner of his closet. “How about you pack up whatever toys you want to take over to your father’s house in your bag? He’ll be here to get you soon enough.”

  I wasn’t studying anybody’s Sean. It was his sister Jalene that I was focused on. She’d called me all out of the blue to ask me if I’d go with her to Paint Shop, a hip nail salon in Beverly Hills. She said she wanted to catch up with her nephew’s mom and ask me something, though she wouldn’t tell me what it was. I was a little apprehensive about her cryptic call for a meeting, but not too much; Jalene was a constant presence in Corey’s life—whether it was baby-sitting for Sean when Corey was over for the weekend, or coming by my house to pick him up herself—and we got along easily. Besides, I was looking forward to the fresh pedi and a few good laughs before I settled in for the weekend to finish up a story for Newsweek (a piece about the impact of criminal laws and police surveillance on hip hop that I pitched several times to my editors at the Daily News but was summarily dismissed as irrelevant by all of them).

  “Newsweek—that’s great for a journalist, huh?” Jalene said, flipping through a magazine as we sat out in the waiting area of Paint Shop.

  “Sure is,” I said, nodding my head. “Sure is.”

  “I knew you’d be great at writing for those magazines,” she said. “What’s up with your girls? How are Amaya and Trista?”

  “Girl, they just started speaking after months—can you believe it?”

  “Damn, what happened?” she said, resting the magazine on her lap. I gave her some sketchy details about the Las Vegas blow-up, and how just a few days ago, I tried to coax Trista into speaking to Amaya so they could work out their differences, how Trista’s dad had passed, and the crazy reunion.

  “Trista was icier than the top of Mount Everest,” I said, shaking my head. “I just couldn’t get through to her. I swear, she’s about the most judgmental person I know, and when she gets it in her mind that she’s figured you out, she runs with it. I’m glad she’s working on that flaw—there’s no way in the world she’d have been able to be Amaya’s friend again if she wasn’t. It’s pretty easy to come to some hard-and-fast conclusions about Amaya, but that’s not what friends are for. I’m glad Trista’s finally realizing that.”

  “Sounds like Trista and Amaya both needed to get over themselves,” Jalene said just as we were signaled to take a seat in the pedicure chairs. “Actually, though, Viv, I didn’t come here to talk about Amaya and Trista. I came here to talk to you about Sean.”

  I snapped my neck around so quickly to look Jalene in the eye that I damn near gave myself whiplash. “Sean?” I asked. “What’s to talk about?”

  “Well, after your baby daddy came over to my house last night, spilling his guts and asking me for advice, I think there’s plenty,” she said.

  “I’m lost,” I said flatly, dipping my toes into the warm milk-and-honey bath. “What do you mean?”

  I listened intently as Jalene explained how Sean dropped by her house with a pint of Häagen-Dazs and a dilemma he begged her to help him work through. He told her that Corey had been pressuring him to explain why his mother and father weren’t together, and that the questioning had become so persistent that he figured he’d better come up with a good reason to tell his son. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that there was no good reason—he and I had grown apart over something that, with just a little bit more discussion and understanding, could have easily brought us closer together had we not been so incredibly pig-headed.

  “And that’s exactly what you two have been over the past few years,” Jalene announced. “Pig-headed.”

  “Hold on there, honey—I don’t think you have any place passing judgment on the decisions I’ve made as a mother or as the ex-fiancée of Sean Jordan…” I began.

  Jalene held up a manicured finger. “Let me finish,” she said. “Just hear me out.”

  I sat back in my chair, but I refused to look in her direction. I stared at my big toe as the pedicurist dragged a wet cotton ball across my nail.

  “I’m not saying you need to forget everything that went wrong between you and Sean. I’m just saying that when he came by last night, he seemed contrite and willing to at least be civil, if not more than friends, with the mother of his child—not only for the sake of Corey, but because he still loves you.”

  “He what?” I said.

  “You heard me. He didn’t exactly come out and say it in those words, but the sentiment was there. And I know my brother. I think that at the end of the day, if he could turn back time and start all over again with you and Corey, he would.”

  “Well, it’s a shame that you really can’t erase over seven years from your memory, because then maybe something like that would be possible, but I don’t see that happening,” I said softly. “And maybe the next time my child’s father calls you for a little chat and chew, you should tell him that you’re not interested in getting in the middle of our private affairs.”

  Jalene sucked her teeth then sighed. “Look, Viv, I have no interest in getting in the middle of anything. I just want my brother and my girl to be happy. You’ve gotten yourself together over these past few months, and we’re all proud of you for that—even Sean. So you probably don’t need any help in the man department. But if I can help you have a happy life with the man you’ve spent a lifetime loving, then I’m going to do that. Love doesn’t come often, Viv—don’t throw it away because you’re too busy holding up the stubborn flag.”

  “I’m not being stubborn,” I said simply. “I just don’t feel like it’s necessary to rehash all of this. I’ve moved on, and I came here today to relax and enjoy my pedi.” And with that I sat back in my chair, turned on the chair massage, and buried myself in the latest issue of People. I wasn’t reading shit, though. My mind was too busy trying to process what Jalene had just said.

  WHEN I’M UPSET, or stressed out, I scrub. Everything. I can’t help myself. I start at the top of the stairs, work my way through the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the linen closet, and the office, then back downstairs and through the kitchen, into the dining room and living room, the music room, the foyer, and downstairs into the basement. When I came back home from my pedi date with Jalene, I headed straight for the kitchen, where I proceeded to mop, scrub, and buff the appliances until they practically screamed for mercy. Sean loves me? Loves me? He lusted for me, that much I was sure of—but only when he was looking for a quick piece of booty. Nothing like ex-sex
to cure that one. But love? Me? Sean? What was I supposed to do with this information? I’d finally gotten my son’s father out of my system, purged him from my mind—carefully filed him under the category I’d neglected to put him in all these years: baby daddy, nothing more. And now that I’d finally gotten over him, I was supposed to fall for him all over again?

  The crack of thunder shook me out of my haze. I hadn’t noticed how cold I was until I heard the rain driving against the kitchen window. I shoved the Mr. Clean, Pine Sol, and Murphy’s Oil Soap back into the cleaning bucket under the kitchen sink, washed my hands with scented hand wash, and went upstairs to my bedroom. In no mood to even read the contents page of a magazine, much less write a story for one, I buried myself under my comforter and waited for sleep to come. The ringing phone jarred me from my sleep.

  “Hello?” I said groggily into the receiver. I was surprised that darkness had fallen outside, lifted only by the full moon peeking through the clouds. I looked at the clock. It was 8:42 P.M. I’d been asleep for almost three hours.

  “Viv. We need to talk,” Sean said.

  I shifted against my pillows, and instinctively pulled the covers up to my neck. Was I ready for this?

  “Jalene told me that you and she talked today,” he continued. “I was going to wait until I brought Corey back home to speak to you, but I can’t hold on any longer. The truth is, Viv, you and I have too much to lose to keep going at it like we do.”

  “Sean, I don’t know that…” I started, but Sean didn’t let me finish.

  “Just wait a minute, Viv—let me talk,” he interrupted. “You never let a brother finish what he’s got to say. It’s one of the things I’ve always loved and despised about you: You say what’s on your mind, but it always comes at the expense of not listening to anyone else. I need you to hear me out tonight, okay?”

  I waited for him to continue.

  “Wow—I thought for sure I’d be hearing a dial tone by now,” he laughed, but my silence made it clear I wasn’t amused. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, over the years, we’ve made some tough decisions, you and I, and a lot of them, I think, were smart moves that helped us get to be the people we are today. There were times when we didn’t always agree with each other’s decisions, but they were ultimately very necessary choices. I’ve never questioned the decisions you’ve made, but I’ve always felt unjustly maligned by you for making the choices that I’ve made. My choices, however, were always made with you and my son in mind.”